At Tala, strong women leaders are helping build a better financial world, advancing technology, rethinking the way we work, and breaking biases. We’re proud to say that 50% of our leadership team is women-led. Here’s how they’re breaking biases themselves and within their teams.
“Finance as an industry has traditionally been more men-dominated, so I am super proud to be able to not only lead an incredible global team of Finance professionals, but to be working with one of the foremost visionaries in fintech – who is also a woman! I’d like to think we’re breaking molds and biases left and right here at Tala – for our customers who have historically been underestimated, for our markets that have not always received a lot of investor attention and innovation, for women who have not had the opportunity to lead either financial services or technology companies. I am grateful for all the mentors and believers (both men and women!) who helped me be able to do everything I do today.” – Jen Loo, CFO
“I was very lucky to have an amazing woman boss and mentor for the last decade of my career. She had a sophisticated and holistic idea about what makes a great leader (not just the stereotypical qualities that mostly advantage men, Americans, or certain personality types) and she gave me an opportunity to lead. She was a different kind of leader – very deep in empathy, but also had a high bar. I think this type of leadership is well-suited for building a representative (I don’t like to say diverse, because what is a “diverse” person anyway?) leadership team. And then that pays dividends because representation begets further representation until there is no one model for leadership, and biases are slowly diminished as people experience all different types of styles and successful models of leadership and teams.” – Kelly Uphoff, CTO
”For me, ‘breaking the bias’ really showed up time and time again in my career when someone took a chance on me to try something I had never done before, including my current role. I have been extremely fortunate and thankful to have many great mentors and managers (including my current manager – Shivani!) who have given me that opportunity and pushed me to feel more confident and taught me to say “yes” so that I could see what doors would open up for me. I similarly try to be that mentor and give chances within my team to grow or take on roles based on skills shown in nontraditional ways as long as they had the basic knowledge, willingness to learn, and a need in the organization.” – Punam Brahmbhatt, SVP of People
“I’ve been lucky throughout my career to have worked at organizations where women held meaningful leadership roles. I’ve also been directly mentored by some amazing women leaders. The common thread in all of these experiences was actually how different they were, and I think it was this diversity of models that helped me develop my own voice and gave me the courage to take big leaps in my career. Flash forward to today – one way I think we’re breaking biases collectively as women leaders at Tala is by demonstrating that there’s no one way to be a woman leader (or any leader, for that matter!) – that effective leadership comes in multiple forms and flavors. I hope that other women and historically underrepresented people at Tala can look at our team, find a model (or combination of models) that speaks to them, and feel more confident in their unique talents and ambitions.” – Lauren Pruneski, SVP of Brand & Comms
